obama's background check bill. obama's gun control bill. obama's bill to limit your ammunitions. to let a guy like joe manchin go forward and negotiate this was a very brilliant strategy because he's a red state democrat who carries an "a" from the nra and has a lot of respect in that community. i think it was a smart play from the white house. you don't want president obama out front on this. you want him to keep the pressure from the bully pulpit in a sense of having the rallies in hartford. in the terms of the actual legislation, less is more in terms of what the white house thinks. >> the other thing, jonathan, we were hearing earlier this week was that the strategy was going to be -- you know, i have this vision in my head of a christmas tree where you hang as much on it as you can so you essentially end up killing the bill. we'd heard that was both on the house side and the senate side, that that was going to be part of the strategy. regardless of what happens today, it's still very much in question what the final outcome could be. >> right, yeah. it is very much in questio